Four Candles, Eight Candles

We started out the morning with birthday pancakes! (That last one is a dragon.)



Andy was rather freaked out by his pancakes and wouldn't eat them. He loves letters, but apparently letters are not for eating. (He had some non-letter pancakes instead.)



We repeated the cupcake idea from Kate's fourth birthday, with one candle one each of Andy's cupcakes and two candles on each of Kate's. I made banana muffins this time, with cream cheese frosting. I also did the letters (Doug made them last time), out of starbursts and flavored tootsie rolls. I discovered that this is not as easy as it looks. They take a bit of work to get them soft, but if you work them too long they get really messy.



It turns out Andy won't eat cupcakes with letters on them either. (As my friend Melany said, "I'm guessing alphabet soup is out of the question.")



Singing to Andy.  He was overcome.







Andy is starting to figure out what presents are about.



Kate is an old hand at this.



Another Elephant and Piggie book? Score!



Most of Andy's presents this year were books. Which means that we get to spend a lot of time reading them with him. He'll come up to me with a book, tug on my arm, and say, "Sit on the couch?" He sure loves his books.

I told Kate that we could have a big party for her this year (eight is a big deal), but then we found out about the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular coming to the Tacoma Dome earlier this month, so we said she could either have a big party or go see the dragons. This was not a hard choice. Doug took her to the show. She wore her pink dragon costume and had a wonderful time.

So we just had our little family party at home and then we picked up Kate's friend Emma and took the kids to Odyssey for a couple of hours. (Low stress, no planning!  Yay!)  They've been a bit cooped up lately, so it was great to get out and run around for a while. I put together a little video: 



Happy birthday, kids!